Ruby's Orange
by ShipsAreLife
Summary: This is the part in TDM when everyone figures out Ruby is Orange and not Green. In Liam's POV. This goes from chapter 18-20 in the actual book. All rights go to Alexandra Bracken. Spoilers. RubyXLiam LiamXRuby


There she was. Oh God. She had Chubs and Zu tied up. This was the woman who was hunting us, relentlessly. Lady Jane.

"Hello Liam Stewart," she says. I immediately throw my hands up. I block her from coming anywhere close to Ruby and I.

Oh God.

Ruby.

She's probably scared out of her mind.

A gun was pointed at Zu's head and I wanted to scream. "Lee," Chubs was giving me a warning. I can't do anything stupid. I need to be smart, but how? What can I possibly do?

The gun is secured to Zu's head. Lady Jane says, "Come here, slowly with your hands on the top of your head. _Now, _Liam, otherwise I can't be sure that my finger won't slip."

Ruby tenses up next to me. I can see a plan formulating in her Green mind. I just need to give her time. "Yeah?" I ask with more confidence then I actually feel. "And what's the going rate for me these days? How much did it get cut back when it took you three weeks to finally catch up to us?"

Her smile dropped then returned. She says, "You're still at a healthy two hundred fifty thousand dollars, love. You should feel proud of theat. You barely fetched me ten thousand the first time around." I can't even hide the rage that's building in me. She continues, "you can't imagine my surprise when your name popped back up in the bounty database and with_ that_ kind of reward? It seems that you've gotten yourself in a fair but of trouble since we last met."

"Yeah, well, I do my best," I spit at her with my words. She thinks she's so amazing because she captured me once. But, that's it. Only once. She's not getting me again. I won't let her. And I won't let her hurt my friends.

Lady Jane tsk-tsked to me. I hate her. I want to hurt her. She says, "but, darling, how could you be stupid enough to go back to that place? Didn't you think I'd look for you here? Your friends were only too willing to tell me where you were headed and why in exchange for letting them go. Lake Prince, is it?" If she found East River it'd be the end. So many kids would have to go back to camp I… I can't let that happen. She says, "If I can pull in that much for you, imagine what I'll get for a whole _camp _full of kids. Enough to finally buy my way home, I think, so thank you for that. You have no idea what kind of funds it takes to get an official to look the other way and admit someone from a disease-ridden country."

_I have to protect my friends. _That's the only thought racing through my mind.

I say, "if you let them all go, you can have me. I won't give you any trouble."

"NO!" Chubs yelled to me. But, my best friend would have to go on without me. This is something I had to do. "Don't-"

Lady Jane doesn't take me up on my offer, she says, "you think I'm going to do _you _any favors? No, Liam Stewart, I'm going to take all of you, even that girl of yours." Rage booms off my body. "Maybe you should consider her condition before you try to bargain?"

I glance at her eyes. She has a plan, I know it. Blood runs down her face. She nods a bit and takes an unnoticeable step. I just hope whatever she's doing is going to work…

"I don't know where you came from, little girl, but I can assure you that where you're going won't be nearly as pleasant." Lady Jane's gun is on me now, but I don't care. It's better on me then on Zu. She says to Ruby, "come here. You first, little girl. I'll take special care of you."

Ruby moves to her. My breathing escalates. Everyone watches Ruby. "Turn around," Lady Jane says.

Suddenly, Ruby's knee collides with Lady Jane's torso. Everyone masks their surprise. I rush to help her, but Ruby's got this. She holds Lady Jane by the throat against Black Betty. I helped Chubs and Zu to their feet. Everyone's just watching Ruby. Ruby kicked Chubs away when he tried to help.

None of us have seen this side of Ruby before. It was terrifying. "Hand him your gun," Ruby says. Lady Jane doesn't give the gun to me, Ruby focuses intensely. Then, Lady Jane gives the gun without questions. Everyone's completely confused, but we don't say anything.

Ruby focuses again, "listen to me very carefully. You are going to turn and walk back across the highway. You are… going to walk into that forest and keep walking until an hour passes and you are going to sit down in the middle of it and not move. You're not going to eat… or sleep… or drink, no matter how much you want to. You're not going to move." Ruby's grip didn't slip. We're all watching a horrible fascination. "Now you're… you won't remember any of this, or any of us."

"I won't remember any of this…" Lady Jane says back, completely out of it. Ruby dropped her from the hold and Lady Jane just walked away.

I hold a small smile on my face. Ruby just saved all of us. She falls to the ground, catching her breath. My smile falls, I say, "Ruby, are you okay?"

She doesn't answer me. I walked to her, she warns, "don't!"

And with that, she's out cold. I pick her up and place her in Black Betty. "What just happened?" I ask out loud.

"Someone's not Green," Chubs mutters.

"She's not Blue, Green, Yellow," I say. Zu shakes her head. "What are Orange and Red?" I ask again.

"She's Orange," Chubs says. Zu slowly nods.

Zu scribbles down, _does it matter? She's still Ruby._

I nod my head to her.

Later that day, Chubs and I fight over Black Betty. I know we need to get rid of her, but I don't want to. She's become like a home for all of us. _"Charles!" _Ruby yells.

I have to look at Ruby, holding onto Black Betty for support, to understand why she sounds so bad. She still looks half-dead. But, I still smile. She says, "I'm gonna go, so you don't fight anymore, okay? I'm sorry I lied to you. I know I should have left, but I wanted to help you get home because you had helped me, and I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry."

"Ruby," Chubs says, quietly at first. Then, we both register what she's saying. "Ruby! For the of… we were talking about Black Betty, not your Orange a##."

Her whole body tenses, "I just… I thought… I understand why you would leave me behind," she exhales.

"Huh?" I say. I couldn't even imagine her leaving us. "We left the radio on in case you woke up, so you'd know that we _didn't _leave you."

That's when she just loses it. She starts sobbing. Chubs and eye just stare at each other and shrug. After a while Chubs does a very comforting gesture-he pats her on the head.

I can't get my head around the idea. I say, "You thought that we wanted to get rid of you because you're not really Green? I mean, I'm not thrilled you didn't trust us enough to tell us the truth, but that was your secret."

"I trust you, I do," she assures us, "but I didn't want you to think that I had forced my way in or manipulated you. I didn't want you to be afraid of me."

"Okay, first?" I say, "why would we think that you pulled a Jedi mind trick on us to let you stay? We voted. _We _asked_ you. _Second, what in the name of God' green earth is wrong with being Orange?"

She sighs, "you have no idea-"

"Exactly," Chubs says, "we have no idea. But, it's not like we're going to win any awards for normalcy anytime soon. So you get into people's heads? The two of us can throw people around like toys. Zu once blew up an AC unit, and all she did was walk by it."

"I can't always control it like you can," she says.

_She controlled it yesterday._

She continues, "And sometimes I do things, _bad_ things." Her voice cracks, but she keeps it together, "I see things I shouldn't. I turn people into things they aren't. It's horrible. When I'm in someone's head, it's like quicksand. The more I try to pull free, the more damage I do."

"But-" Chubs starts. I hold a hand up. He stops talking.

I say, "we want you. We wanted you yesterday, we want you today, and we'll want you tomorrow. There's nothing you could do to change that. If you're scared and you don't understand your crazy abilities, then we'll help you understand. But, don't think, not for one second, that we would ever just leave you." She just sighs. After a while I say, "Is this why you acted that way when I said the Slip Kid might be an Orange? Is that really why you want to find him, or do you just want to go to your grandmother's? Because either way, darlin', we'll get you there."

She whispers, "both." We walk around to the van. "Where are we?"

"Somewhere between North Carolina and the Great Dismal Swamp… I hope," I say. I tell her I need find Zu.

That night, while preparing dinner, (and thinking about Ruby) I ask, "So that's how you figured out the clue… you saw a memory of it?"

She nods, "not so impressive now, is it?"

Something about her voice bugs me. I say, "No. _No. _That's not what I mean. It's just I'm trying to imagine what the inside of that kid's head looked like, and the best I can come up with is a swamp filled with alligators. It must have been terrible."

She says, "Not as terrible as slipping into someone's head I actually like."

"Did you?" Chubs asks.

Ruby asks, "did I what?"

"Did you ever get inside our heads?"

I say, before she can answer, "of course she's in our heads, Ruby is one of us now."

"That's not what I meant," Chubs says, "I just want to know how it works. I've never met an Orange before. We didn't have any at Caledonia."

"That's probably because the government erased them all," Ruby whispers. She looks down at her hands and I stare at her. What does _"erased" _mean? She says, "That's what happened to them at Thurmond."

"What do you mean?" I ask, eyes wide in alarm.

She answers, "for the first two or three years I was there, we had every color, even Red and Orange. But… no one really knows why or how it happened. Some thought they were taken away because of all the trouble they caused, but there were rumors they were being moved to a new camp where they could do more testing on them. We just woke up one morning and the Reds, Oranges and Yellows were gone."

"What about you though?" Chubs asks, "how did you avoid getting bused?"

"I pretended to be Green from the start. I saw how scared the PSF's were of the Oranges and I messed with the scientist who was running the classifying test. Those kids were… they were so messed up, you know? Maybe they were like that before they got their abilities, or they hated themselves for having them, but they used to do terrible things."

"Like what?" Chubs asks.

Her eyes relive the memories and her breathing quickens. Chubs opens his mouth to speak, but I stop him. She whispers, "I just knew I needed to protect myself."

She says, a little stronger, "So now you see what a mistake it was to let me stay."

Zu shakes her head no. I stare into her eyes. I say, "Try imagine where we'd be without you, darlin', and then maybe you'll see just how lucky we got."

That night, everybody slept in Black Betty. Everybody else is asleep, I'm wide awake. Ruby's asleep. She's so…

I can't fall for the girl. I know I can't. In the world we live in… I can't. But, here I am, running a finger down the back of her neck. She's fluttering about, muttering things that don't even make sense.

"You were muttering to yourself. You okay?" I ask.

She just looks at me.

Her lips tug up into a smile.

"What?" I ask, "What are you smiling about?"

Her fingers suddenly lace into my scalp. She moves it down, trying to fix my bed head. She moves her hand away, back to her, and I snatch it. She tries to move away again. "Nope," I say, "Mine now."

She says, with the roll of her eyes, "I'm going to need it back eventually."

"Too bad."

Chubs mutters out, still asleep, "Crackers, yes..."

I roll my eyes and Ruby holds in a laugh. I say, "he dreams about food. _A lot._"

"At least they're good dreams," she whispers. I remember her fidgeting around in her sleep today. She must have had a nightmare.

"Yeah," I agree. "I guess he's lucky."

I set her hand down, just to see if she'll pull away from me.

She doesn't.

Our hands lace together. I study her hands. They're a lot smaller than mine. I hesitate before asking, "If you wanted to could you see what he was dreaming about?"

She nods slowly. "But, those things are private."

"But you've done it before?" I ask carefully.

"Not intentionally," She whispers.

"To me?" I ask.

She shakes her head no for a quick second. "To the girls in my cabin at camp. To Zu that night in the motel. I've been in your head, once. Just not in your dreams."

"Two days ago, at the rest stop," I mutter. She pulls back from me. But, I still hold her hand. "Don't," I say, "I'm not mad."

I bring her fingers to my head. "Does it make it worse? To be touching someone, I mean. Is it harder to control?"

"Sometimes." She says, "Sometimes, when I'm tired or upset, I'll pick up on someone's thoughts or a memory they're thinking about, but I can avoid being pulled in if I don't touch the person. Touching them when my head is like that… it's an automatic connection."

"I thought so," I say, "you know, when we first met, you used to go out of your way to avoid touching us. I kept wondering if it was something you had been trained to do at your camp, because every time one of us would try to talk to you, you'd jump like we had just shocked you."

"I didn't want to hurt any of you," She whispers with pain in her voice.

I nod to our fingers laced together. "Is this okay?"

She doesn't answer me. She asks, "Are _you _okay? What are you thinking about?"

I start, slow at first, "I was thinking about how strange it is that we haven't even known each other for two weeks, but it feels like I've known you for much longer than that. And I'm thinking that it's frustrating to feel like I know certain parts of you so well, but other parts of you… I don't even know what your life was like before you went to camp." Her body tenses. "This is a place where we don't have to lie, didn't you tell me that?"

"You remember?" She asks, releasing the tension in her shoulders.

"Of course I do. Because…" I start, "I keep hoping that goes both ways. That if I ask you why you don't want to go home to your parents, you'll tell the truth, or if I ask you what Thurmond was really like, you'll stop lying. But, then I realized that it's not fair, because it's not like I want to talk about my family. It's like… those…" I pause. Her eyes meet mine. I continue, "I don't know if I can explain it, it's hard to put into words. Those things-those memories-are mine, you know? They're the things that the camp didn't take away when I went in, and they're the things I don't have to share if I don't want to. I guess that's stupid."

"It's not stupid," she agrees instantly, "that's not stupid at all."

"And I want to talk about everything with you. Everything. But I don't know what to tell you about Caledonia. I don't know what I can tell you that won't make you hate me. I was stupid, and I'm embarrassed and ashamed, and I know-_I know_-that Charles and Zu blame me for what happened. And I know that Cole has told Mom about it by now, and she's told Harry and the thought just makes me sick."

She shakes her head to me, she snorts a little, rolling her eyes, "you did what you thought was right. I'm sure they understand that."

I just shake my head. I can't see them understanding in a million years. But, maybe if I could actually talk to them… this world, I swear. It's getting annoying.

Ruby reaches over to me, he hand wipes away the hair that has fallen on my face. I probably need to get someone to cut it for me. My hair is getting ridiculously long. She repeats the motion, moving her hands a bit more confidently now. "What do you want to do?" She asks, still quietly so the others don't wake up.

"I've got to wake the others up. We have to keep moving, on foot," I say.

"What's the rush?" She whispers back. I smile a bit. "I think we could let them sleep, at least for a few more hours."

"And then?" I ask.

"We hit the road," she says back to me.


End file.
